Opinion Spooks and shadows

It may be in the interests of Indian intelligence agencies to examine whether they can live with parliamentary oversight of a limited nature such as that practised in France or the UK. In the UK,an Intelligence and Security Committee consisting of nine cross-party MPs provides a layer of quasi-legislative oversight. It reports directly to the prime minister and is obliged to produce an annual report on the overall performance of the British Intelligence Services,but only a sanitised version of its report is placed in Parliament for debate. It would,however,be fair to take into account the concerns of the intelligence agencies before the proposal is given a final shape. Intelligence organisations must not be subjected to oversight by another layer of officialdom if they are going to be made answerable to Parliament. Moreover,the intelligence community is likely to be more comfortable with the proposed parliamentary oversight if politicians with a criminal background are not allowed to contest elections as the Congress president is reported to have demanded a few days back.

The restructuring of the security architecture,an idea proposed by Chidambaram in his IB speech,had also been examined in detail by the ARC. The role of the NSA has attracted a great deal of attention recently. Obviously,the idea of creating the post of NSA came from the American system,where such a post had existed in one form or the other since the introduction of the National Security Act in 1947. In the US,the post was conceived as that of an aide to the president,to assist him or his office in coordinating the working of the departments concerned with national security,particularly defence,external affairs (state),finance (treasury) and,since 2001,home (homeland security). However,the NSA in the US did not always have direct access to the president. During Ronald Reagan’s time,the NSA was a member of the White House staff who reported to the chief of staff. On the other hand,the CIA director,who was also the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) with a coordinating responsibility over all intelligence agencies,held cabinet rank during 1993-2001.

In India,we combined the functions of the NSA and DCI (or Director of National Intelligence as the post is now called in the US) in one person. The office of the NSA as it emerged in India posed a formidable challenge even for M.K. Narayanan with his extraordinary skills and vast experience in intelligence. It would perhaps be appropriate to separate the two distinct functions of inter-ministerial coordination for implementation of national security-related policies and inter-agency coordination for generating the intelligence required by the PM for guiding the formulation of those policies.

Chidambaram’s proposal to revitalise the still-born Multi-Agency Centre and convert it into NCTC under a director-general seems to be an effort in that direction. (This again was a proposal discussed by the ARC.) However,it is important to ensure conceptual clarity while giving shape to that proposal. Chidambaram wants the NCTC to have analytical and operational capabilities. Experts like B. Raman and V. Balachandran have pointed out that the NCTC in the US does not have an operational role. It is important to note that there are two counter-terrorism centres in the US. The CIA set up one in 1986 within the directorate of operations. It was a unit in which action-oriented spies from the directorate of operations,analysts from the directorate of intelligence and technical experts from the directorate of science and technology came together to work,putting in place a system to overcome the functional problems posed by territorial divisions in the CIA in tackling terrorists whose operations transcended territorial boundaries. That unit,as far as I am aware,continues to function and has a major operational role in America’s fight against terrorism. The NCTC,set up under the DNI in 2004,on the other hand,is meant to be “a centre for joint operational planning and joint intelligence,staffed by personnel from the various agencies” but “does not direct the execution of any resulting operations.” (From the NCTC website.)

Such a set-up meant for joint operational planning is feasible in India too. But one challenge would remain in the arena of security architecture even if the NCTC is put in place — that of finding a solution to the problem of coordination of intelligence relating to aspects of national security other than terrorism. That is an issue which must attract the attention of the national security establishment at this time of transition at its apex level.

The writer retired as chief of the Research and Analysis Wing in January 2007

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